I really wanted to do NaNoWriMo this year. I did it last year, I won early, it felt great. It was a fantastic way to kickstart my writing, especially since I was restarting my new series. I hammered out the first 50k words of Spectrum Blade in what felt like no time. I wanted that again this year for book 2, Paragon of Fire. Life decided that wasn’t going to happen.
From there, I had a few directions I could go. But submitting my daily word counts and sharing them with other people always feels nice, so I decided to be a NaNoWriMo Rebel this year and start the new book, but set a lower goal. I picked 25,000—half the usual target word count. That meant even if I only wrote half the days in November, I should get there, right? Good thing–I’ve already missed a lot.
I’ve been sharing photos of a letter board with my word count updates on Instagram. It’s been nice, fun, and gives me something to post. I can’t say I’m doing great on my goals, but at least I’m working on it. Originally, I’d planned to spend the first two weeks of this month producing videos and preparing Spectrum Blade for publication, so I wouldn’t have started writing until halfway through the month anyway.
Speaking of… Spectrum Blade is now up for preorder. I haven’t had time to talk about it much, but I’m thrilled to be this close to having the book out. The book will be published on November 20 (Yes, this weekend) and it’ll launch in Kindle Unlimited, so it’s Amazon exclusive… for a while.
I’ll continue to update my author Instagram with word counts, probably even after the end of November, since I’ve got a ways to go before this book is done. I don’t expect it will be as long as the first one, but I imagine it’ll probably be about 90,000 words when it’s done—which is still “epic” territory and nothing to sneeze at!
For now, though, you can check out the preorder page for Spectrum Blade’s ebook edition here. Paperbacks are still up in the air due to some issues with my printer, but I’ll be taking preorders for signed paperbacks… hopefully by the time the ebook edition goes live.
Wish me luck on this book—I’ve got some big plot holes to fill!